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Book Reading Campaign

Book Reading Campaign

How would you react if you had to leave your home at a moments notice? What would you bring? Where would you go?How would you adjust to living in a new place where everyone sounded and spoke differently?

Each year, UNHCR and Childrens Books Ireland invite children to experience life as someone forced to flee. Whether its fact, fiction, autobiography orphotography, our annual book reading campaign, run in partnership with libraries and bookshops across Ireland, gives readers an opportunity to see the world from the perspective of one of the world's 25 million refugees.

Popular titles in our book list include include ‘The Kite Runner’, which documents the boyhood friendship of two friends in Afghanistan and ‘The Go-Away Bird‘, a first-hand account of the Rwandan Genocide by a 12 year old refugee.

World Refugee Day on 20 June each year is an opportunity to salute the strength and courage of refugees; the solidarity of those countries, including Ireland, who assist refugees; and the contribution refugees make to countries around the world.
A group of children are gathered around a young woman reading a book who is looking at the camera.

Young Ukrainian refugee Yeva Skalietska reads her book to students from Our Lady’s Grove Primary School in Goatstown. Yeva published her book ‘You Don’t Know What War Is’ with Bloomsbury about how her life changed overnight. She talked to sixth class students about fleeing Ukraine, what it is like to write a book, and the simple things Irish people have done to make her feel at home.